Clutching at Air
by RaiMidori
Summary: When all you have is gone in an instant, like clutching at a gossamer nothingness that will never succumb. You can wait forever, but nothing will ever appear. The air is empty as always, but as sharp as glass. Naruto X Sakura.
1. A Breeze From Midnight

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: My first non-one shot. I actually meant for this to be a one-shot in the beginning, but I thought it over and decided that I should try something else. At the end of this chapter, I realized what a big turning point it was, and how hard it was to continue on with another paragraph after it. The pairing is unusual for me, a die-hard SasuSaku fan. But, like mentioned before, I wanted to try something else. This didn't come out too bad, ne? **_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Naruto**_

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When she asked me what I would do, her emerald eyes locked plaintively with mine, I had no answer. There were a million things I could do. There really were, and if you gave me just one day, I would be able to list them all. But when I'm asked to decide which one to choose, I'd crumble under the persistent pressure. It's painful, it really is. And if I said it wasn't my fault, I'd be lying.

It's not finished. _We're _not finished. That would be the first thing I would've said to him. I would've walked right up to him despite all the jagged wounds in my flesh, the waterfalls of blood pouring from them. I'd say it right there, despite the poised sword, adorned with my very own blood. But then, the hardest part would be to grit my teeth and bear the agonizing pain of his sword running through my frame and the words he would speak, as sharp as daggers, and just as painful. _You may not be, Naruto, but I am. We're strangers now. _

Oh, it's lost. It's really lost, beyond the beyond, where no one can catch a glimpse of it anymore. It's too easy to say. It's too easy to slap on a sheepish smile and casually change the subject. When no one notices it, that's when you can die hard, just within yourself.

I got tired of thinking and said what I really felt, deep inside me. "I don't think Sasuke's coming back unless we catch him, Sakura. I'm going to go find him for you, and then…" I let my voice peter out, the last hesitant breath caught in my throat. I turned on my heel, planning to hold back the lump in my throat until I was well out of sight of my light-haired teammate. _Sasuke's never coming back. We'll never find him. No matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want him to. _Sakura looped her pale fingers around my arm, gently, at first, but increasing in strength. Her thin voice rose as she spoke. "No, don't do it."

There's no guarantee you'll live. That's what all shinobi know. No one's said it aloud, but we have it locked up within us, a ball of fiery shadows, licking flames that engulf you piece by piece. It's frightening, but if you've lived through it once, it suddenly morphs into a challenge, a simple question. Will I live to see tomorrow? The thoughts will start to pound consistently with your heart beat, a painful yet exciting throb. I'm alive, I'm alive, at least… for now. But with Sasuke, there're no guarantees or false hopes. Just pure nostalgia, a dream-like scene that I know will never exist. It's already started to fade away into the haze of fragmented memories.

And Sakura? There was a time when I loved her with all of my being, and I was willing to do anything for her, anything at all. I still love her just as much, maybe even more, but my resolution's changed. When you get older, when you mature, you realize, suddenly, the world has been narrowed. I know, now, that I can't do everything Sakura might want or fare better with. I just can't, but really, no one can blame me, because that's part of being human. That's all part of the lovely ribbon wrapped package that's labeled 'Life'. When you're older, you realize that it wasn't all it was meant to be. Suddenly, you start to lose focus. What's real, and what's not doesn't matter, but at least, at long, long last, you can truly be yourself.

She looked lost, unsure of what to say or do. She released her grip on me, embarrassed. I tilted my head cautiously in question. When she finally laid her gaze to rest on my face once more, I could tell that she had changed. "Don't go after Sasuke. It's all done and gone, and you're all I have left now. I don't want you to leave me, too. Please, _don't go._" The tears started falling, one after another, until it was like rain was bestowing itself upon the ground. I caught a drop in my hand, spellbound by its fragility. I caught her face, reflected in the water, distorted, but just as beautiful. I took her cold and wet hand in mine, and placed it on my beating heart. And then I lifted it daintily and slowly, and let my lips brush her rosy skin. When she looked up, the candle in her eyes had been blown out by the wind.

I was always wondering how Sasuke felt about her. His usual acrimonious grunts were of maddening persistence, driving me to the very verge of insanity. His austere midnight-black glares spelled out his distaste in more ways than one, and he gave them out generously, seemingly at random. Despite all of this, Sakura let her benevolent heart become infatuated with him, though no matter how strong her longing was, it never was even close to enough to satiate Sasuke's black soul. It was always the same, blank, probing stare accompanied by an almost undetectable lift of his nose, drowning in the obvious disgust that covered his features. I hated it, but Sakura chalked it down as another of his lovable features. I hated that, too, but, really, there wasn't a thing I could do.

What do you do, the first time you fall in love? I really, really don't know. It's too ironic- being a shinobi had granted me agonizingly painful wounds and scars that ripped across my body, fated to never heal. But when faced upon a wound of the heart, I don't know what to do. There's always going to be pain, but what will I do with it? Will I give it to you? Will we share it? Or will I… bear this pain in an oppressing silence, for all of eternity?

In a childish act of amnesia, I repeated what I had said only moments before. "I'll get him back for you, Sakura, you're in pain!" my feverish voice had risen a few pitches, ringing with a desperate intensity. Sakura didn't respond, biting her lip so hard that a few drops of blood beaded up and sparkled under the punishing heat of the sun. An erratic breeze blew her hair into her face, but she didn't bother to retrieve the strands. My voice broke as I said it, an unbidden window into my weaknesses. "Look at me." She only kept her gaze, unwavering, on the ground, and poked out a bubble gum coloured tongue to collect the blood. I gently brought my hands to her face and tilted her head towards mine. They were raging pools of anguish, suffering, and a one-sided love that had delivered a death blow to her old self. Lined at the very bottom were tears, twinkling in the sunlight, mirroring her breaths as they shook with a lifeless passion. In the end, it was I who looked away, but only for a moment. My gaze settled on a robin, its red feathers glowing majestically. I saw a flash of empathy in his eyes as he spread his wings, prideful, taking to the sky.

The night fell quickly, racing itself across the horizon. We had been talking for hours. Sakura wore an affable smile on her silky lips, a fake gossamer mask that I longed to be tangible. "I mean… you love Sasuke, right?" I heard my voice break, but ignored it. My urgent tone was ripping through the air, my heart worn on my sleeve. She peered at me closely. "Sasuke...? Uchiha Sasuke… I…" Her gaze was flitting across my chest, the wrinkles and faded lines of the fabric under direct scrutiny. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the urge to encourage her, but not wanting to push her too hard. Her voice picked up in an eccentric way, a sharp edged blade that sliced at my heart. "I love him. I love him the most." Sensing my pain, she went on, her undine eyes luridly shining under the glare of the dying sun. "But… Sasuke's left me. He's the past now. And you're all I have left. Don't leave me. Don't ever leave me alone."

Clutching at air. What does it feel like when you reach out for the sky but receive nothing instead? It's just as painful, agonizing, as grasping a handful of glass like a lifeline. In the end, nothing ever happens, and you are awarded with a collection of scarlet wounds that will serve as an eternal reminder of what wasn't there, even when you tried as hard as you could. They will close, eventually, leaving thin, ugly, scars that won't ever go away. What do you do then? Because sometimes it's too hard to keep living.

She reached out to touch my hand in a titillating way. I shivered, feeling her presence pressing in on me like the darkness of midnight. _Clutch, clutch. _"Sakura… I can't do this." My voice, mixed in perfectly with the rustling of the leaves, wavered, unbidden. _It's air, it's nothing. _"I want to go find Sasuke. If we give up now, we'll-" She studied my face for a split second before reaching a trembling hand to stroke away the fervent, angered tears clouding my vision. And then she tugged at my collar softly, and almost undetectable was her unmistakable scent of roses, mixed in with the pine wafting on the night air, filling my senses to the brim. _Nothing's there, stop reaching. _She let her silky lips close the space between us, burying my mouth with a candid myriad of kisses. _Stop reaching before the air turns to glass. _I called her name but it was nullified, smothered in the torrent. Sakura, Sakura. That's a beautiful name. _Blood, you're bleeding. _I meant to say that, but as I held it in my heart, I was sure she could hear it. We didn't need words. I was sure she knew. But just in case, I tipped my head back, capturing the moment. I love you, Sakura. Did you know that? _It doesn't hurt anymore. _


	2. Black and White Contention

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: Second chapter already. I started writing this when I realized some people had actually put alerts on my story- that was pretty surprising. Thanks to everyone who put an alert on this story, reviewed it, or even took the time to read it. People like you help me get the inspiration to write more. This chapter is a bit shorter, but carries a bit more meaning. This isn't the end, there are a lot more things I want to happen.**_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Naruto**_

I… wanted it a lot. I just never understood it. Well? What's it like when you just want something you don't understand _so badly? _I… really don't know. That's just the way I felt about Sakura, the way her body swayed so gracefully, the way her emerald eyes seemed to bore into your soul. I could watch her forever without saying a word. Really, the long kind of forever. The kind of forever that drags on an on, fated never to turn back. The kind where your memories flutter past you so slightly that you start to doubt they're real; where blood is blood and pain is pain, but nothing matters but her.

I remember him. The veracity of his vivid image would pop out at me in stark contrast to the rest of the bland world. When the cherry blossoms swayed under the weight of gravity, death and change, he walked away from me. Just like that, his back exposed, his spiky, charcoal hair flung restlessly to and fro in the scented breeze. I remember all of it, but I don't know why. It's the most arduous diatribe my mind has conjured- why, Naruto? _If it brings you so much torment, just let it go. Let him go._ But I can't. I just… he's a part of me, I can feel it. I don't ever want to let go of him. He's a comrade.

Us two, we're chiaroscuro. An endless contention of pure opposites. If I said that, he would look at me, his lightless eyes pale against the sky. He'd laugh a spiteful laugh, throwing his head back in mirth. An endless cycle of eccentrics. For him, it wasn't I who mattered. I wasn't even an obstacle. So I promised myself I'd prove him wrong. I said it in my head, I really did. _I'm going to take this kunai and… I'm going to hurt him. Not a lot- just a little bit. I want to remind him, show him I've gotten stronger. _But it was all empty. Like an aberrant magnetism, Sakura loved those words. She smiled and encouraged me, and I knew I couldn't go back. Never again. But these hands will never hurt a comrade. _He'd _tell me it was weakness. But it's not. It's just me.

Me. Naruto Uzumaki. How different am I from him?

I once saw a tree- a beautiful one, no less. It sprung upward from the ground majestically, a silver frame for the cerulean sky, winding up and breaking into a refulgent canopy. The porous holes let out an exuberant light- I basked under it for a while before circling it, just once. But once was enough. On the other side, hidden away from my curious eyes, was a hollowed out trunk- the tree had been dead for years. But I couldn't know- I didn't know. I don't want to blame myself for something as frivolous as a decadent tree, rotting away in an earsplitting silence. But I felt the weight in my heart like no other. If Sasuke was on the other side, he would have seen something totally different- perishing beauty, while I was caught in its magical lie. I couldn't let that go, though. Sasuke saw things differently than I. And who knows? I could be the wrong one, all this time, living out my life as a fabrication.

Who would forgive me, then? Who would actually approach me after all of the wrongs, all of the delusional mendacity? That girl- the coral haired, benign Sakura. She's the one I've loved for all of this time.

Sakura let her chartreuse gaze, in contrast with the blush blooming on her anemic face, wander across the dying landscape, worn thin by our countless sparring matches and jutsu practices. It was in startling disarray, showcasing fading slash marks on tree trunks from our lesson on chakra control, traces of cardinal blood littering the soil in plentiful droplets, charred grass from Sasuke's fire style drills. Charred remains, like the bonds of our friendship. How was I…? How could anyone even _expect_ me to fix all of that on my own? It would take a lifetime. I didn't have that kind of time. I was going to die someday, and never come back, I wanted to be Hokage, I wanted to love Sakura as who I was, I wanted Sasuke to come back. The blackened yet symbolic bits quivered at the slightest breeze, quailing from the universe. I was on the verge of tears, my whole body shaking with the effort to hide them from my partner. She pretended not to notice but instead placed her lips on my cheek, elegantly consoling me. I took her head in my hands and turned it toward me, letting her beautiful and full mouth lock with mine exquisitely. Her lips were still the same, like the silk of a midnight kimono, and all of a sudden, it _was _midnight, and time was passing without me, rushing ahead, tip-toeing backwards. I let my thoughts settle on Sasuke, the obsidian traitor, and, of course, _of course, _Sakura, the striking, dazzling goddess before me. I felt my love for her take control over me, drowning me in a moonlit lake where a shimmering, disembodied reflection of who I used to be stared at me blankly, tauntingly, and I didn't mind, _no_, I didn't mind at all.

Oblivion is too dark- it floods your eyes like a solid parasite. An opaque cage that consumes the soul- but, really, it's a rather sterling experience. Having nothing to do, nothing to live for, but living anyway. It's a meaningless existence, like buying a pearl for its sheen and never seeing it again, but when you live like that, even if for a second, it's like the torrent of anger sadness is accepting that you just _can't. _Maybe you don't want to, or maybe you want to give up. But part of moving on is realizing that it's alright not to be able to do everything. In oblivion, the only pain is the nostalgia that you bring to your familiars, but that, too, is washed away by the cleansing nothingness. It's a swirling whirlpool, it's a bottomless pit. Whatever you want it to be, it both is and isn't. Oblivion is nothing and everything, and no one can ask for any more.

I don't know why, it's just… things like that comfort me. The inviting obsidian depths of an eager blindness seem to beckon me, like it's really a good thing. I've questioned them, questioned them plainly about the veracity of it all, but they'd just ignore me, singing, joyfully, lyrical verses of another language, gibberish that I doubt I'd ever understand. There is a way to oblivion out there, there's a path. Humanity has blocked it out, separated it with a titanic barrier, challenging anyone who dare think the unthinkable. It hurts when you try, it hurts if you stop. It hurts when you leave. It's an endless cycle of affliction, a steady, growing forest fire willingly engulfing you in flames. Ah, but maybe, maybe _then _you can reach it, by being destroyed you travel somewhere else, by dying you can be nothing, feel nothing.

She didn't want to let go of it. She wanted to keep holding it all in, safe, inside her. The childish, defenseless way she clung to my body was a hint in itself. I watched her tapered fingers, as pale as the rest of her body, trail across my chest in a plea of forgiveness, a dull, aching throb of repetitive meanings. Don't go don't go don't go. Understand me, please, understand. She tugged at an imaginary daisy, watching the fluttering petals waltz, slaves to the every whim of the wind. _Tug. _Sasuke. _Tug. _Naruto. _Tug. _Sasuke. _Tugtugtugtugtug-_Naruto Sasuke Naruto Sasukenarutosasukenarutosasuke… she pulled the last one free. I watched in awe as the air where it would have existed shimmered, just the tiniest window into an oasis. "Naruto." She said it a matter-of-factly. Just the way she was so sure touched my heart like no one else could. I felt the troublesome tears sting at the corners of my eyes. Wiping them away nonchalantly, with a single swipe, I pretended they weren't there, no, they never were. The daisy itself was never real- an intangible manifestation of our emotions. I'm sure she'd never understand what I meant by that, but I said it aloud anyway. The pearly sheen over her eyes glittered like the tumbling, windswept waters of a rogue, forest-side brook. She said, simply, "I understand, Naruto." And then she kissed me. Not too hard, not too lightly, just perfect,_ just perfect_, and I felt that, all of sudden, I knew why I loved her.


	3. The Broken Mosaic's Tesserae

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: A special thanks to FallArbor for being so supportive of me in the first two chapters. You really made my day! **_

_**This chapter has changed POV: it's now from the viewpoint of Sasuke. I wanted to tell the story from a different, less biased perspective. Now that you're reading this, it's up to you: Who's really right? I love this chapter for its deep views on things, and I hope it just might change your mind about certain concepts. **_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Sasuke**_

_What do you want, Sasuke? _My mother would ask me that, often, unrelenting. Like the sometimes unwanted pulse of your blood, people will try to convince you that, no, you can't stop it. You can't destroy yourself. But you can.

Sometimes, it's better. When the rain pitter-pattered on the roof, singing hollow songs and weeping for the lost, the wind was buffeting the house, covering his confident footfalls with violent care. He walked with a pride about him, his aura singing off-key in a gruesome harmony with the rain, _pitter patter, pitter patter, I killed them, I killed them, pitter patter. _I asked him, why? Why in the world did he slaughter like that, mercilessly, restlessly, heartlessly? I left the other question unasked. And, why, _why _did you leave me, only me, and me, alone, alive? He was being testudinately circuitous about it, and I loathed it, I loathed him, and I wanted to scream- I wanted to scream and scream and scream and never stop. In the end, he was bearing a murderous smirk, the corners of his mouth turned up joylessly, and through those ugly lips escaped the gruff words: Because I could.

No, don't you ever say, 'It's simple'. It's not. Part of being alive like that, part of being left alive to be an avenger was to teach me just how hard, how complicated it was. Like a laborious trial was laid out for me in the beginning by guffawing, scheming, weevil-like creatures that wanted nothing more than whole-hearted entertainment. As I toiled through the strenuous training sessions, I imagined them watching me by the means of a hidden, invisible camera made possible by other-worldly expertise. They'd point out how strong I was getting over nothing and break into explosive chortles that exposed their yellowed canines, thirsting for blood. Whenever that particular thought floated to the surface of my mind, I'd train even harder than before, ignoring the sharp, stinging, complaints from my body, my concentration flaring to the limits. For a superficial reason like that, I worked even harder than before. Joke or not, I saw the whole thing with my own eyes. Joke or not, Itachi deserved to die.

It never worked out. It was all about the tribulations that I forced myself through, though, no matter how many times I nearly killed myself from excessive exertion I could never build a solid bridge over the constantly widening gap between us. I couldn't even get halfway there, across that nearly infinite expanse of expertise that even the constant absence of his training could not shorten. It was literally devoid of phosphorescence, yet he somehow found himself alleviated by the nullity- comforted, almost. When we possessed a rather commonplace relationship, nearly a decade ago, I found myself constantly in awe of the way he would continuously sink into the dank recesses of his fevered mind, ignoring his environment and all those around him with amazing effectiveness. My parents were fretting about his deviated behaviour patterns quite often, which disturbed their lives with caliber. Back then, I was in their favor for my normality, the way I would always stay vigilant of my surroundings and never fall unconscious at seemingly random intervals. My actions were of any typical child, though my loving mother and father were so blind to my brother's antics that they viewed mine as miraculous developments. In that way, I was typically on the receiving end of nurture and forgiveness, while my brother was treated with such misunderstanding roughness that he grew up twisted, broken. Had I tried to sympathize with him, nerve-wracking as it was, perhaps things would never have turned out this way- cruel, horrid, and so deficient that anyone would prefer a dream world to the oblique, raven-slated reality.

The ebony, chaotic storm clouds rolled in like death gods on parole. On and on, they paraded through the heavens, spiteful and flagitious. They blotted out dawn's aurora and threw a tenebrous, ominous shade to the earth. At first, it was quiescent as always, the gnarled oaks swaying eerily to an undetectable wind. But by the time I caught myself in my reverie, the storm had began to pick up, the intemperate branches thrashing helplessly like the limbs of a rag doll, looking light as ever but adroit enough to deliver a fatal blow. The rain picked up, howling like an untamed beast in torment. It flung itself against the rattling window panes, wanting in, craving carnal wreckage of some sort. Malevolently, it ran over the fragile daisies in the garden, bringing a cold, melancholic twinge to my heart. I had never felt even a fragment of sentiment for the delicate, frail plants- I had always scoffed Orochimaru for allowing them to thrive so close to his dwellings. But even so, the pain I felt, like a splinter in my heart, was as real as anything else. I wanted to collapse, completely destitute of the strength to continue on, and weep until my eyes would remain soaked with heartache from the starless void where my comrades once were. I remained, riveted at the rain-bitten, shuddering window, willing the glass to break and engulf me in a thousand sanguine gashes.

When a mosaic shatters, the glass tesserae, refracting all kinds of resplendent light, will remain alone. Once beautiful, together, but torn apart from each other, separated. The fluorescent glimmers that trace their way across the surfaces twist and dip with the viewer's eye. That glimmer is the unshed tear of the living piece, with such refinement that it can be seen by anyone or anything. A tear that never left its birthplace shivers in the breeze, just like any real tear. It freezes in the winter, leaving a duller luster to flash in time with the frigid beat of the sun. Wanting it restored is not enough. Perhaps, one day, an empathetic child will lean down towards it and look upon it as a puzzle. It will be pieced together slowly, painstakingly, with many blunders. And even when it is completed, it will never look the same as when it first was. What is left will be an innocent, crestfallen child with bandaged hands and a twisted, ugly remnant of the past, wishing it had never been fixed. Like the wistful pieces of a shattered mosaic, I found our friendship permanently broken, like it had angered the earth itself. I wanted it back _so much. _But be it by a child or an expert patterner, the effort would be wasted on an item that fate herself has declared, "Broken".

I could still see his blithe eyes, endless waterfalls of cascading azure, layer upon layer of genuine emotion. Whenever he smiled, the simple gesture would reach them and the waterfalls would rocket glistening spray into the air, enchanting dewdrops that drifted down so slowly you could've sworn time had stopped. I loved that smile of his, in a clandestine, sedate manner. I never told him that- perhaps because I could see him guffawing felicitously at me, holding his stomach comically while tears held in the corners of his sky-stained eyes spilled over his visage like rain, running down the dilapidated face of an old building. Like the face of an old building that grew ancient and weary, reflecting the sun's rays in balanced serenade of earth to sky, the line that was drawn between them blurred, and then finally, _finally_, gone.

Orochimaru padded in, the usual malicious smile replaced with an impatient, child-like grimace. Stepping lightly over the tatami mats, he flexed his alabaster, slender fingers experimentally. Ignoring the furious storm outside, he traipsed right to me, eyeing me suspiciously, as if I was planning to escape. I kept my gaze on the window, choosing not to look into his flaxen, snake's pupils. He fingered my face tenderly, sending an unbidden tremor of terror rushing through my body, my pulse quickening to the limits, my body burning up. I could already feel the rope whip snaking over my tender flesh, drawing blood from artificially opened orifices. Scars from previous sessions tingled warningly, reminding my already sick with fright mind of what was to come- pain, excruciating pain, more pain that I had gone through ever before. The only thing that came close was the sharp sting in my heart, every time a familiar face was brought to mind. _I'm sorry. _The whip lashed out. Orochimaru's face was lavishly decorated with an insidious smirk. I felt the first blow and knew I could not _possibly_ take any more. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry! _Every time the wretched rope cracked with demonic force upon my unclothed body, I repeated the same words in my head. _I'm sorry, Naruto. I'm sorry, Sakura. I'm sorry, I really am, I'm sorry I'msorryI'msorryI'm…sorry! _The devil called out to me, grinning his horrible grin. "Isn't this enough for you, Sasuke? Isn't it? Or do you want more?" I felt the whimper escape my bruised lips, and immediately wanted to take it back. But, alas, there was no more of it, no more of the thunderous cracks, no more of the hateful voice. I lied myself down on the stone hard concrete, the shackles digging into my wrists, the pool of my own blood slippery and sticky on my abused skin, the unbearable pain reduced to a knife's thrum, like being cut over and over. I curled in on myself, and felt my heart explode with regret. If I had known it would be this painful, just me and my thoughts, just me and the past that I could have changed, any other way, any other way than _this, _I… would never have wanted to be alone.

The rain doesn't stop.


	4. Tears Of Liquid Silver

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: A special thanks to IronicEnding, whom I had an intelligible conversation with that changed my opinion about many things.**_

_**The 4**__**th**__** chapter is here. I hope no one waited too long. I had a bit of trouble writing this, but it came out alright. I'm rather proud of this chapter, and, as some of you may have already noticed, the point of view has changed back to Naruto. For those of you eager for more of Sasuke, however, this chapter won't disappoint. Although Sasuke himself makes no appearance in it, it's what I like to call a 'stepping stone' for future progress.**_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Naruto**_

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Is it… make-believe or real? About intangible hazes and romps through childish fantasies, I can spin fantastic tales. I can weave intrinsic fairylands; I can sing dysphoria with a pulsing, real heart. But, please, don't ask me to love you. I can't make myself love anyone- I can't make myself stop. I'll weave you a tale, an aurulent, blank paper that's soaked with ink. If you try to write more, the tainted truth will consume you, so, no, please, don't tell me! What if I don't want to know? What if I… want to keep living like this forever? Even if it's a lie, even if it's nothing, _nothing _at all. It's what I've wanted all this time. Who I've loved.

The rusty, ancient hinges of the door emitted a series of muffled screams, calling out for me, trying their hardest to stop me. Like the pull of gravity, the weight of the grave, the little, dead hands tugged at my shirt, my skin, whatever they could get a hold of. I shook them off, but the midnight-imprints were still splattered carelessly across the pages, innocence tainted by the night. The moon cried, liquid silver tears running in rivulets across the clarion village. Pointed roof tops threatened to skewer empyrean-like deities, edges curled deliberately, like the corners of an insidious smirk. The footfalls brought memories to the tabular surface, except, that time, they were mine alone. They rushed through the dormant alleys, exploring the maze of twilight, but, really, they were tame as ever, unconsciously stripping me of the silence, obeying my every command. I was finally running away, finally, because it was something I should have done. The revelations were racing each other, somehow finding it necessary to make it to me first.

_You're just like Sasuke, now, aren't you? Leaving the village, leaving Sakura. _

_No! I'm not! This time it's to get Sasuke back for her!_

_But either way, you're leaving her. What if Sasuke let for her? She's still alone._

_But I know I'll come back._

_You don't. You never know. Sasuke might've thought he had known, but he's gone all the same._

_But… I love Sakura. Shouldn't that count for anything?_

_If you love her, why are you leaving her?_

It was a frustrating battle, fighting against myself. I could see her in my mind clearer than ever, smiling at me, consoling me. Wasn't she the one that saved me?

The nighttide closed in like a fist around any refulgence, any minuscule hint of lingering sheen. I cursed it for its obscurity, but it was comforting all the same. I decided that it was the closest I would ever get to a finishing quietus with my heart still beating zealously. Leaving my home village only a few months after a 2 year absence, leaving my long unrequited love just as she had begun to return my feelings. I didn't understand it, but, somehow, I wanted to be able to reach out to Sasuke, my opposite, the one who must've carried the pressure of death while I lived in the illusive berth of a counterfeit beacon. The slow, decisive thuds of my feet connecting with the ground became the inexperienced accompaniment to the fervent rhythm of my pulsing heart, the orchestral illusion driving me on, on, _on…_ into the depths of the timeworn forest.

The branches whizzed past like a scene from a movie, haughtily set to fast-forward. A few flew a mere finger's breadth from my body, already generously scarred, and a few did indeed connect, fishing curses from my throat and drawing blood that whipped back and shivered in the force of an explosive gale, staining passing forestry with unbecoming splatters of scarlet. I pushed through, creating startlingly vehement wreckage to act as my trail. Rouge, wooded limbs snapped with enough force to do considerable damage, splinters crackled and launched themselves into the air under the force of my chakra, flaring furiously, sharing my fiery determination. My hair whipped around my face like a ghostly halo, proclaiming me a celestial being, though I knew I was far from the omnipotence it so wrongly advertised. The metal plate that bore the leaf symbol, bearing an eminent position upon my headband, pressed into my forehead, cutting into the full force of whistling wind. The current, salient as it was, and branches, frenzied as they were, were dulled, suddenly, mercifully. I only took one thought, one entity: Sakura.

I still remember the very first day. When I laid my childish gaze upon her, somehow, _somehow, _something inside me stirred. In the sea of memories, in the vast expanse of what's past, it's a mere droplet. But I still have it. I can still see it, somehow, in contrast to the rest of interminable fog. But I knew. I knew how small, how insignificant I was back then. It was just me, me against a grey backdrop of people, a backdrop that, monotonous as it was, stretched on in perpetuity. One thought was all it took; one glance was all I needed. But it was too small back then. How was a twelve year old to know of love? I would have to wait. I should've said it to myself, just to make sure, but even then, I knew, waiting, waiting for _her_, would turn days into years, weeks into decades, and months into centuries. Waiting would, all of a sudden, become sewn crudely into my life. A little piece of patchwork done by my own hands, that, to anyone else would seem facetious, but to me, and only me, was a priceless treasure.

Somewhere along the line, those feelings grew into something else. Like the painstaking, artful metamorphosis of a butterfly, they just tempered themselves skillfully, hidden from my knowing. By the time my 14th birthday had arrived, I was adamant about it. I loved her- I knew it better than ever before. Everything, _every single thing _about her, I became infatuated with. Languidly, but unquestionably, whenever I closed my eyes, she would still be there, her candied scent, like roses after a spring shower, filling me up with a vacant felicity.

A defiant branch lashed out, dexterous. Thrashing wildly, it connected with my arm, sending electrifying pain shooting up it. I bit down the angered protest and kept going, clutching blindly at the deep wound, hematic, florid liquid seeping in between my fingers, staining the opaque sleeve. It was pulling me back, it was weakening me, but all of a sudden, it didn't matter because I was breaking free, breaking _free, _and there was sunlight, there was radiance, everywhere, _everywhere._ But then there was darkness. The kind of suppressing darkness that felt like two hands around your throat. The kind of darkness that made you only want one thing, but want it _so badly. _Out, right then and there, no matter what you had to give up, no matter what you needed to save, because, all of a sudden, that's all that you care about.

It's not just her anymore. It's everything, everyone. When did things start to become so precious? I would undeniably risk my very life for every one of them, even if it were for the faintest, withering hope. Maybe that little resolution is what this is all about- my love, all of it, for all of them. A glimmering, ochroid camaraderie, one that reaches far beyond time, beyond space- because when met with friendship, friendships like ours, Sasuke, those trivial words unfurl from their incarcerating cages and show us what the sincere world, the _real _world is like.

Looking back, I find mistakes. Piles upon towering piles of mistakes, etching a finely-crafted shadow onto my paper-white soul. Even if I spent my life going through them, would I ever find one as fallacious as that night, long ago, when I watched him leave? When he just… when he just left us, and I hadn't the slightest inkling of what to do. The way the cherry blossoms played with his hair coyly, ruffling it from side to side, adding a twinge of grim humour to the otherwise disdainful scene. The shadow he left on the pavement stayed behind, carved cruelly into my minds eye like a brilliant flash of light, where devised colours had names and sadness was magnified a thousand fold by a single tear from the heavens.

Razor sharp spires pierced the cloudless firmament, slaughtering body-less nymphs with hearts of gold. The gate itself was strewn with wreckage- twisted, melted pieces of steel attached themselves to the already repugnant entrance, bringing to mind tortured souls of the past that had been cursed to adorn their most loathed place, one that they had been sure death would have freed them from, as a gruesome warning for casual passerby. No guards in sight, I explored the tightly sealed windows with my eyes. They were sealed with the utmost care, as if the place were expecting a sudden devastating flood. The enigma remained, a foreboding accent to my plan, but I cast it away as I leaped into the courtyard, feet barely touching the floor, mind on nothing else but him, _him, _Sasuke. The wet puddles on the floor shivered as I sprinted past, enchanted windows into parallel dimensions, or perhaps just escapes from everything. After all…that's what I wanted the most.


	5. Effluvia After The Rain

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: Today's acknowledgement goes to the one and only: Sniper Hawkeye. It's always great to find writers striving to improve!  
**_

_**Here's a relatively short chapter. This chapter has changed POV again. It's now from the POV of Sakura, whom I believe hasn't had much coverage. This is the most abstract chapter of anything I've ever written. If you're serious about understanding all of it, it may take a while to register what I'm implying, and you may have to read certain bits over. You might feel that some parts have "skipped", but that's just Sakura losing herself in her thoughts in such a way that she loses awareness to her surroundings. If there are any other unclear parts, feel free to PM me. **_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Sakura**_

----------------

Love. What a vacant joke. I don't find it funny at all- having this 'emotion', this prized feeling that makes us hurt, makes us _bleed _salty tears stolen from a solitary ocean. I can see it, in my mind's eye, I can see it. An anile antiquarian, bending over stiffly to pick up a torn page that reads, _Humans_, and she turns the crinkling, dying page with her arthritic fingers and fingers the words as she reads them: "Humans are an extinct species that once ruled the earth over a billion years ago. It is estimated that they died out from a complex disease that is rumored to have been called _Love._" She'll cackle softly to herself, and then, she'll return the book, with its dilapidated, incorrigible pages and humorous words, to its rightful and equally ancient shelf, wondering to herself if humans ever really, _really_ existed.

But it's not the cruelest thing. No, the cruelest thing is when… when the one you love the most leaves- when he leaves in a desperate search for a long lost teammate, without a word, _without one word_ to you, and all of a sudden, like a sudden blackout, you're all alone, confined, in the recesses of your sickly mind and you realize, so fast, that you needed him more than you ever dreamed of. That you wanted him more than you had ever wanted anything else in your life. That you were, finally and surely, in love. And he's gone.

I should've felt something. Like in those melodramatic movies, when the heroine clutches at her chest exaggeratingly, suffocating, and proclaims for the world to hear: "He's… dead". And then she hangs her head, defeated, and lets loose the most bereft, languishing cry you've ever heard, and it pierces your ears until you're completely sure you'll never hear anything else. And then? The credits roll.

The steady tap-tap-tapping of the Jounin rushed through my rattling, brittle window like a parade with me watching, childish eyes following their track. I could feel the scream pushing up through my chest- faster, faster, please, go faster because I love him and he's gone, he's gone and I want you to find him, bring him back, bring him back to me because I love him, more and more, more and more everyday. I knew my emotions were bubbling to the surface of my eyes, and I wanted them to see me, a melancholy lover pressed to the window, drowning in the void of nothing carelessly left gaping and unhealed in my heart. And I wondered, then, if I was, perhaps, just an invisible apparition drifting through the fleeting nightmare of someone –anyone- else.

It was sudden. Eminently sudden. Looking back, I can only remember feeling disgust towards him. The closest I had ever gotten to love was a neutral indifference, shown with the tiniest of small smiles when he rehearsed one of his jokes, or feigned ignorance when he was left, often, all alone. I can only imagine what it must've been like- being avoided by the one you adore the most. I might've went through some of that with Sasuke, but even then, I knew it was absolutely, completely _nothing _compared to the steady, rhythmic affliction he endured. He was isolated from the world like an inveigled animal, chained away into a forgotten cell, dropped haughtily into a land that no one knew or cared about, left to die and detoriate- a stagnant carcass with its head down, still waiting patiently for a loyal comrade long, long after its time had come and gone.

My legs were prickling with an onslaught of pins and needles, each step bringing a wince to life. The wooden boards below me were spent, complaining listlessly about a wasted life. For the sake of silence and something to do, I halted obediently, heels scraping lifelessly at the ground. Drifting in a pretend world on an ensorcelled gale, I spread my wings, bird-like, and took to the cobalt-streaked sky where no one dared to leave, and wasted lives were a thing of myth, alabaster paper rejected at the teal, comforting gates of Paradise because only real things mattered.

He's… different. From Sasuke, from everyone. I had known, all those times. I saw it in his eyes the very first time I looked into them, those eternal oceans that time itself dare not change, fountains of true artistry, a new world that I might've spent my life looking into, being lost in, if only, if only I had the chance. If we, as humans, had forever, nothing more, nothing less, I'm sure, now, that I'd spend every minute of it by his side. That boy… that Naruto? He means more to me than anybody else ever will. Can I promise you that? Yes. Yes, I can.

The curtains were drawn in across the glass in so many windows. The sunlight battered recklessly into them, fading the once-vibrant colour to a dull imitation and vibrating in lazy time to the sense of farewell. The sweet scent of jasmine lingered in the air, suspended on pallid ribbons about to be cut heartlessly. I caught it in the air before the last one dropped from a resilient cloud, shattering tragically upon the oceanic waves of the earth. Perhaps the curtains were drawn in an attempt to shut out all that sadness, pieces of dying jasmine floating upon frothy, immaculate tips of overridden breakers.

What's important to me? There used to be a lot of things- Sasuke, my comrades, getting stronger. But, now, everything's faded away in the monotonous pulse of repetition. What does matter, what doesn't is all indistinct, like the effluvium after a rainy night. The dew that stains virgin leaves runs down in a half-hearted race, and an overcast miasma hangs over the corner of the universe, reaching through pure water to bring some magic upon a dreary city. It seems like that, the animate houses all drenched an exact shade of grey, like mirror shards had fallen from the heavens instead of still-life droplets, soaking everything in this paradoxical world until it's all the same.

If I loved him so, why wasn't I going after him? Why wasn't I, too, risking my life to retrieve someone who, once upon a fairytale, was a friend? As I sat there, under the cloudless sky soaked a pure beryl, I cast away broken bits of time that I assumed didn't work anymore, but still ticked as they faded out of the forlorn scene.

Why? That's the question I've been asking myself. Why did someone like him- someone so sincere, so pure- end up the kyuubi vessel? To have a belligerent beast chained inside you, threatening to break you if you didn't let up, whipping rusty chains at inoperable gates. Why did people like Sasuke, people with vengeance running through their blood, have to pursue the darkest path? If it weren't for things like that, I might've been… saved. But there's no knight in shining armor from a dusty library, no savior brandishing a razor-sharp blade. All this time, I've been lying, lying to myself, cutting out paper silhouettes for when I would be lost enough to believe in them. I think, now, I can finally let those paper people drift down, slowly, passionately into the time-stopping past, where grains of sand that once fell from an hourglass lie, rigid, on the bottom.

The sketched people walked by in a town lit by the moon and sun at the same time. Time had stopped, but no one minded. When you have no purpose, there is no time, no carefully outlined map of the world. There's just you, just you in a sea of crying people with faces smudged, blurry with tears. The artist looks up from the paper, and all of a sudden everything's gone, right before, just before the moment. She starts drawing.

Wanting was not enough. I knew that. But instead of following him, I felt my bones crackling, on fire. There was pain. A lot of it. Some of it real, most of it in my head. But the worst part? That pain was pain, no matter where it came from. And even pain wasn't enough for him to come back, all the way back, into the village, into my arms. I was waiting.


	6. A Once Golden Bell

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: Kudos to luckyblackcat12, for always being there for me!  
**_

_**Another short chapter? Sorry about this. I wanted to end it there simply because it would be great punctuation. I had originally planned for this story to go on for eight chapters, but at this rate, it may be nine. I don't have a problem either way, though I'd prefer it to be longer, because I simply do not want it to end! But a story always needs an end, doesn't it? This chapter goes back to Sasuke. **_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Sasuke**_

* * *

The walls were drenched with blood. My blood. It was teaching me, brutally, how painful mistakes could be. I watched the intricate patterns of red on red entwining with each other, and wondered, timorous, if that same red would glare at me from a mirror. That scarlet liquid, painted and splashed sloppily, permanently, into the bars of my make-shift cage, in the shape of a room, was taunting me, challenging me. It pumped through my ears like the cloven hooves of horses, pounding tirelessly upon fine desert sand. Filtered light broke in through the screen, a window for no one to look through. It lay, dormant, in a rectangular frame, situated on a wet floor with no means of escape. The shadows of the bars that held me in were so contrasting that I shut my eyes entirely, hoping, dreaming that it was a mirage, a fleeting vision cast by Orochimaru, genjutsu, perhaps. But, opening them again, I found the same scene: fresh moonlight, unrivaled by anything else, shadows pooling up in flooded corners, and the same red, red pool of glittering blood, stealing light from another thief, undrying, unresting, unfading.

I can still hear those magic words ringing in my ears, like the chime of an oxidized desert bell, ringing promptly for no one to hear. _You're truly my son. _His thin lips were freed from the usual spiteful scowl, replaced instead with a warm and almost fatherly grin that I wanted to watch forever. But as fate would have it, I was only a lucrative replacement for that hateful brother of mine. Are these wounds a punishment, too? Some kind of sick revenge? And I can hear the answer as clearly as those words my father once said for me, only me: _Of course, of course._

Me and her… we were lovers, in a sense. Back then, when the stars would break through cloud after cloud, fingering layers of polluted atmosphere with a childlike forgiveness, she loved me with a real heart. When untainted children were genuine, I longed to be one of them. Maybe then, we could've been together. Just the two of us, without any doubts, without any regressions- yes, yes, because that would've been perfect, and it would've made this horrible world so much more… _bearable. _

I threw all that away a long time ago. I heard it screeching those dagger-sharp words at me, I heard it pleading for me to _not let go, oh god-just don't. _But I tossed it behind my back, hearing it make a sickening crunch on the loamy soil, when it really shouldn't have made a noise at all. But in a twisted world like this one, in an unfair and world that sometimes make you wonder what the use of all of it is, anything can happen. When you see the one thing that can save you promenade away- melting into the crowd, the sea, of everything else, you suddenly realize that it's alright to bend the rules that the crazy world probably didn't even think about before composing. Just this once, when it's life or death, black or white, climb- as high as you can- or fall.

Those moonstruck thoughts were interrupted promptly by militarily brisk footfalls. My heart, pounding at a maniacal speed, flew to my throat in that suffocating moment- _what if he's back what if he's not done I can't take more please don't make me don't make me don't don't don'tdon'tdon't- _"Had enough, Uchiha?" was the cold punctuation for my frenzy of hysterics. The familiar voice of Kabuto surged through me like a euphoriant, and for a second I felt the phantom pain of the sterilized needle slicing through my flesh effortlessly, and the cool slide of the drug pulsing against the walls of my bloodstream, even when they said, they _promised _I wouldn't feel anything. His slate hair was ruffled and unruly, as if he had unconsciously ran an elongated hand through it just moments before. His calculating stare was fixed shamelessly on my bare body, probing it like a buyer might a product. I half-expected him to come over and perform a full-body check, just the kind of insane thing that I had started to grow accustomed to. They were most likely putting on an act, being thorough and unrelenting just to watch me suffer as their prized lab rat. Perhaps it was… their 'food', a necessity to life. My suffering, that is.

At first, the torture sessions were limited to when I retorted mindlessly or lashed out to defend my pride. Whenever I criticized him, he would be sure to punish me mercilessly, almost like the way my father used to scold me, but for him it was all a game. Eventually, he ran out of excuses and cut back on them entirely, whipping me at random intervals as an outlet for stress or just for his own demented pleasure, the same revolting grin crazy-glued onto his face every time. At times like those, I imagined their faces over and over, and decided that the pain was just a punishment. Just one in the endless, rain-bitten queue of punishments that I deserved. When I thought of it that way, it felt almost self-inflicted. The deeper the sensitive, pink scars ran, the longer they took to heal, the closer I got to being able to forgive myself for all the things I had done wrong.

Somewhere, I took the wrong turn. Somewhere along that path, someone slipped a tempting aphrodisiac into my sight, blooming, promising. But I will not blame them. It was I and entirely I, who followed the bait like a mindless pawn, pretending to play on the oak, sweet-smelling chess board while secretly longing for the world beyond. The gnarled hands that lifted me, granted me flight and life, were the hands of tired, senile old men, leather boots tapping away at the ground, as if to bring a renewed beat to their hearts, just as weary. As I pored over how to escape, unbeknownst to my captors and even I, time had passed me by, and the chess game was long over. All that was left was the insistent prodding of the wind at my cage, asking me, _what? What did you waste your life on? _It was the one question I could never answer.

Kabuto stood where he was, two fingers poised rigidly to adjust his glasses. The lens flare refracted onto my masterpiece- unreadable lines of crimson- and shivered there, afraid of its maker. The anger rushed up, subtle at first, but throwing itself into a grand crescendo. I felt a disembodied voice and hoped that it was not my own. "Get out! Leave me alone!" it barked, the sound akin to that of metal on metal, rusty hinges left unpolished for months, years, maybe, leaving Kabuto standing there, statuesque as ever, removing his hands from the attention-hungry spectacles and peering at me lazily, dismissing the explosion with a flick of his wrist. "If I leave, who will be left?" he crooned, his eyes morphed into felicitous half-moons. The voice replied almost instantly, but I heard the fear, the surrender. "I don't care, _get out, _I'd rather be alone that be with _you_." The grainy laugh that followed scratched at my ears. Kabuto, face as infuriatingly unfathomable as always, turned on his heel and left, his gait disappearing as quickly as it had came.

There was a silence. The kind that exploded in your ears pugnaciously, snarling like a hunting dog, saliva soaring and splattering anywhere in the vicinity. I bathed in it for as long as I could before breaking down, feeling the tingle of skin where the tears would hit, a shock of pain where the salt would sink into half-healed wounds before it even came. I prepared myself for it, dragging the god-ridden chains with my limbs. But then the steps came. They were erratic, tumbling. They broke the silence and the weight of the chains and the pain of my tears and my tears themselves. I lifted my head, encrusted with my blood, just in time to see a flash of golden. A flash of golden laced in with the deepest blue you could ever find- even if you searched the world twenty times over for the perfect piece of lapis lazuli, it would be nothing, absolutely _nothing _compared to it. They gazed at me, at me and ultimately, finally, I had no words to say.


	7. Running With Him Again

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: Thanks to IronicEnding for helping me out with the iffy bits in the last chapter!**_

_**Sorry about this being so late. Life has been rather hectic for me lately, can you relate? In this chapter, the POV is back to Naruto, like in the first few chapters. If you're perplexed as to whether it's over or not, it isn't. I have more planned- the finished version should be around 9-10 chapters. That being said, it's almost done. Has it been a good ride? **_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Naruto**_

He hadn't changed. Not at all. Under the thin moonlight, his cheekbones jutted out a little, and his prominent jaw line was more visible. But he was still the same Sasuke, his hair as unruly as ever, his eyes lightless and phantom black. It was those eyes that looked out longingly under falling locks of blood-dipped hair, his face, an empty palette. In the dimly lit room, all light was extinguished, the shadows from stray moonbeams glaring out in almost palpable proximity. He raised a shaking hand as a sporadic salute, and attempted to smile at me, his thin lips twisted, the corners of his mouth twitching marginally. The blood that pooled around him reminded me, faintly, of a magic circle, chalky, calcium carbonate lines scraping across granite flooring, dances and spells and uncountable piles of fairy dust. All sorts of things that didn't exist.

I wasn't born with anyone. I was all alone, from the beginning. I asked, then, what was I born for? Who did I live for? No one answered me. Perhaps they stayed away from me simply from fear of an incurable disease, a clone-like xenophobia that spawned across the village. It was the worst feeling imaginable, to be completely, wholly, entirely alone. Sometimes, it continued to the extent that I would grab blindly at my chest, wondering if I was, indeed, the victim of some horrible epidemic, and if that deadly plague was the culprit for the pain in my chest. I was taught it was called 'a heart', and it was what kept me living, what kept me alive. So, then, I asked myself, why? Why did something so important, so wondrous, hurt so much to have?

Children grow up, and eventually, die. It's a never-ending circle, repetitive to an almost immeasurable extent. 'Those who inherit the will of fire' and 'those who follow the path towards the darkness'- which path did you take, Sasuke? You've grown up, but you didn't leave me behind. In that equally immeasurable expanse of time, I've grown up, as well. I've been wondering to myself, for ages now, maybe even longer: which path? Which path holds your footsteps almost guilty, altruistically keeping the echoes of your farewells? Which path must I follow to find you, save you, and keep you just the way you are?

His hand was glacially cold, sending numbing shocks through my body at mere contact. His fallacious eyes sent chills up my spine as he whispered, his voice grainy and unrecognizable, "Naruto." His lips had a violet tint to them, a betrayal of his decaying state. He left it at that, standing on spindly and trembling legs, looking more like an infant learning how to walk than anything else. The tears stung at the back of my eyes, threatening to duplicate the pathetic scene in front of me. I pushed them back, looking away, more as an excuse not to have to see my closest friend reduced to a shivering mass of weakness than to cover up my sadness. As the kunai I threw at the chains bounced off rather annoyingly, a reverberating, metallic sound filled my ears. _Ping, _it sang, _ping, ping. _Sort of like the rain on a windswept autumn afternoon, or the aloof trickle of steady droplets rolling off outreaching eaves.

We used to run together. Not knowing where we were going, eventually forgetting where we came from. We would run and run, stopping only for time's sake or a furious guardian that jabbed their finger accusingly at us and herded us in with a threatening tilt of their chin, screeching about classes or duties or missions. They were all things that we either didn't understand or wished we didn't. Because it was always so hard to be a shinobi. Things we weren't ready for were thrust in our direction, people we loathed with our very being stared back at us from dusty mirrors. So we ran, wanting to forget it all. Wanting to leave it all behind, for, what is life but a cage, anyway? What is life but chains that hold us down, bars that hold us in? We ran through auriferous fields and voracious forests; butterfly tinted plains and expiring rivers. We trekked through glistening dreams, too, as they spun _wants_ out of quick silver and nothingness. We hoped to run again tomorrow, right, Sasuke? Tomorrow we'll go and see the world, the world we want to live in. And it will be amazing because, eventually, we willforget that the _real _world is waiting outside, just a little ways off.

I took that frozen and dying hand in both of mine. He looked at me, just looked at me, astounded, mouth gaping. He formed broken phrases that gurgled off a broken tongue. In the end, I just yanked on his arm insistently, hoping that even a temporarily mute child could understand. "We have to go, come _on._" He just nodded tightly, forcing all of the questions and emotions down a sore throat. "Okay" he whispered hoarsely, and clambered onto my back awkwardly, so much like a child learning how to walk. I bit down on my tongue to stop the wave of tears, but once we started running, they just faded away. Maybe because we were together, running, again. Maybe because we were free again. Maybe just because being with him left a tingling feeling in my chest, creeping up through my lungs and into my air stream, my windpipe, just like Sakura did. Because I had discovered what happiness was like again.

Everyone is born with a clean slate, born as an unsullied infant, needing someone else to survive. Sometimes we are tainted- by envy, by lust- and lose our way. There never has been a right or wrong. Shinobi are people that respect that fact. It's all about perspective, like the tree Sasuke and I lay under. Maybe, somewhere along the line, you realize that what you thought was right wasn't right at all. You realize that, suddenly, you want something else. And all of a sudden, _that _is what is right. Who knows? We could all be fighting for the wrong side, relying on an inaccurate gut feeling. We can only keep guessing, right?No one will ever know. That's why I hate to fight. Who knows? These hands have slain hundreds –no, thousands- of people. And death is the kind of thing that cannot be undone.

His katana was incredibly deleterious- it sliced through enemies like they were nothing, like they were simply mirages. They fell under our combined blows, and even as I felt the strain in my legs from carrying double my weight, we were through the onslaught. The corridor squeezed the air from our lungs, and we thrashed through the bodies, wanting nothing more than to get out. Kabuto stood at the end, adjusting his glasses ingeniously for perhaps the millionth time that day. He said nothing as we glared at him menacingly, daring him to attack. Sasuke's weight, lighter as it was from the torture and mistreatment, was sending my legs into shivers, beads of sweat rolling down into my blood-caked sandals. Orochimaru's subordinate stood, rooted to the ground, peering at us with less malice than we sent at him. Unfazed, he said, simply, "You won't survive, you know?" Sasuke smiled at him, a cold-blooded, murderer's smile. "I don't have much left to lose." As we teared past him towards the exit, he remained silent, pondering what he had said.

I love the light. I love it when, on rainy days, it bends and fractures into rays that drift down from the sky. I keep telling myself that, one day, I will sprout wings and be able to fly away- so I can touch those clouds, those ribbons of pure light. But I am told that I am human, and as such, I will never be able to fly. But how I wish I could.

The wind was whistling like a train, brushing and pushing past us like a vicious creature. He raised his voice, but I still had to strain my ears to hear it. "We should have saved him." His voice was still hoarse, as if someone had dribbled pebbles down it, and I could tell it hurt him to talk. "Don't talk, Sasuke, we're almost there, okay? Just… just wait for a bit, alright?" I could feel my whole body aching undeniably, my clothes soaked with a cold sweat and his blood. Instead of slowing down, I pushed harder, feeling a surge of confidence and wanting to go home- to Sakura, to Kakashi, to… _everyone. _I wondered if he would understand. What love was. Somehow, I felt he could. "Hey, Sasuke?" I mused aloud, wanting an answer. "Hn." he replied, chin resting on my shoulder, exhausted and in pain. "Do you… do you know what love is?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Just, I mean… I wanted to know, is all."

"What kind of love…?"

"Any kind. Just in general, I mean."

"In general, huh. I... don't know anymore. Do you think I do?"

"Yeah, I mean… I want to believe that."

"Do you believe in _me_?"

"Upon being asked to break a bond, even the most heartless of people find that they still have a heart, however small and unfeeling, Sasuke. I believe in you, even though you might not believe in yourself."

And a flocculently edged silence fell on us, and neither I nor he knew what to say.

The gates flew open to greet us. The first one there was Sakura, her viridian eyes lined with shivering tears, her hair unbrushed and her gloves soaked with tears. She couldn't force a word out. She let her eyes flit between me, and then Sasuke, and finally, stumbled towards both of us and, bereft, let out a languid cry that sliced my heart to ribbons. She clutched at my soaked jacket and didn't let go, tugging at my collar until I would look at her. Tenderly, she placed her lips on mine, sliding a tentative tongue between my lips. She held me as if I would break, as if I would float away or dissolve into the wind. _I'm not fragile, _I wanted to say, but all the bottled up emotions within me gradually rose to the surface and there was nothing I could do but press my body against her, wishing, hoping, _begging _that the moment would never end.

"Do you need me as much as I need you?" she choked, fresh tears rolling down.

"I need you more than I've ever needed anyone or anything."

She smiled. 


	8. Pocket Full Of Rubies

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: Thank you, thank you, thank you to FallArbor for your endless well of inspirational words **_:)

_**Hello, everyone! The newest chapter is finally here! The POV is back to Sakura. This is a chapter I have been planning since the beginning of CAA, mostly because it is one of (if not the most) emotional chapters of the story. I am extremely surprised I could get this far- it's all thanks to you readers! Thanks for sticking by me. I hope you find this chapter as big of a turning point as I found it to be. Comments are very welcome, especially those with constructive criticism.**_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Sakura **_

* * *

It was dark out. Dark and suffocating. The blinding glow of the waxing moon seared into my retinas, ribbons of silvery light pouring into my room. I watched as armies of argent-haired maenads stormed across the walls, lightly stepping over the piles of books and scrolls, prancing like baby unicorns sweeping over wind-brushed prairies. The light was silenced abruptly as only light can be by the trailing dress of a sky goddess out for a walk. 

Thoughts of both of them clouded my vision. They were what made me whole- a half and a half. It was the sound of _their_ footsteps that I knew best- Sasuke's brisk, military-like steps and Naruto's padding –and sometimes stumbling- gait as feline as the monster that possessed him. I remember flattening my ears to the tent's polyester fabric on a mission. I was the only female in the group, and, as such, always slept alone. But on countless nights I would find myself being kept awake just listening to their breathing, just knowing that they were safe. I was content just watching them. Eventually, though, the punishing wind from missions long past found its home in my heart and I realized what the cold was telling me: that it wasn't enough.

If only I could've done everything. I had heard it all. Squinty-eyed elders patted my arm gently, musing aloud in wonderment, _now, how was she able to do that? She's amazing, I tell you, made an antidote for the poison in less than an hour, yes, she's a child prodigy. Tsunade has taught her well. _I felt the tears in the corners of my eyes- why was it that everyone saw me as an angel of war, a goddess of victory? No one seemed to care about all the things that I couldn't do. I couldn't –I could never- see through Naruto's bewitching mask and heal his scars. I could never get through to Sasuke and save him from the sadistic snake's clutches. How long had I stayed behind, barred in the sidelines, watching things happen in front of me? How long would I have to wait until I could truly, really, be able to save something? Tsunade grabbed my wrist, then. She looked licentiously into my eyes and pronounced the single word carefully, delicately. _Never._I felt my heart collapse under the sadness and tore myself from her grasp, already feeling the coldness of the blade pressing into my wrist.

I could never understand how the door remained silent like that, loyal to my plight. Nevertheless, the hinges of the door emitted not a single squeak as I shuffled blindly through the carpeted hall. I opened the front door and felt the cold buffet me in felonious waves. The moon cast long, skeletal shadows down the road, drawing unused rail tracks over innocent granite. I traced and retraced my steps over the iron, drawing railway ties with an idle finger. My steps echoed unheard through the village, leaving invisible footprints through sand poured from another dimension.

It was nighttime, and, as such, dark in ever unexplored corner, dripping with poison and blood and pain and memories, sharp as the written word and just as crucifying. I loved the night, with its enigmatic whisperings of worlds long lost and the scuttling of animals alert- ears pricked skyward and beyond. The night sky was a dark, dark canvas already bespeckled with spilled coffee, light emanating as it soaked into the paper. Beyond it all, I imagined the artist with his lips curved in a slight frown, brushing over the rebellious dots lightly with a freshly mixed colour, only to throw up his hands in exasperation- possibly sending the piece into further disarray- and replace the brush into its rightful place and start over with a new canvas. Grumbles, low and deliberate, can be heard flying from the mouth of the artist starting over, starting over and not quite noticing the masterpiece he had created.

That night was just like it: uncountable sprinkles of decaffeinated bitterness splayed in casual formation along the trails of shimmering blackness- a lake of the dead highlighted and portrayed from a child's eyes. _Mother, can we go swimming today? The water is beautiful, so beautiful! I want to watch it forever and ever- we have forever, right?_

As if from a spontaneous teleportation, he appeared- someone who I had always thought to be the very darkest shades of black but seemed almost _bright _compared to the artist's canvas. His eyes glinted under the magic lamp of the moon, flickering traces of twilight captured on glass. He opened his mouth to speak but I could already tell that he could not form the words; Instead he shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, looking for the world as if he were on a mere evening stroll. Midnight left him standing out like a paper doll held against a leather jacket, exposed, delicate, and, for the first time in his life, breakable.

I didn't notice until he tilted his body. He shifted his weight again, but this time the kunai in his hand caught the light and glinted like a signal flare. He looked at me through the haze of the night and caught my eye, fragmented pieces of my longing for him sending my heart fluttering with the wings of a thousand fey butterflies. Without a warning, he clutched at his heart and crumbled against the unforgiving floor, a silent plea forming on his lips. What came out, however, was a deeper look at the truth.

"Sakura… you know, right? That I love you more than anything in the world."

I found that, in turn, I no longer had any words to say. Instead, I did the only thing I could, as a healer that could not save, as a friend that could not take away pain.

I ran up to him embraced him.

Both he and I knew that, somehow, just that was enough.

He held the handle of the kunai gingerly between bruised fingers, wincing between horribly close intervals of time. The tip was poised and ready, a dull and weary veteran from the war. He watched me carefully, maternally, knowing that I understood.

He was going to kill himself. Orochimaru's plans were clear: Sasuke was valuable enough to him that he would come back to get him; attack the Konoha village for that purpose alone.

His voice was lilting, but shaken, as if suspended from the thinnest of strings.

"I've always loved you. Always, always. I suppose you never could have noticed. It was my fault- if only I had told you sooner. I was a fool- I thought we had forever." He cawed, irony dripping from his voice. In his eyes I saw the unshed tears, lingering like humans do. Lingering and shivering, afraid of the end.

"Sasuke, I-"

And he captured my lips in a kiss, a cry of reverberating forgiveness. His hand found its way behind my waist and he pulled me closer, the freezing warmth of his body exploding in my senses. Beneath it all, barely hidden, was the copper-enlaced scent of warrior's blood, tattooed onto his skin and fated to never leave, warning me that his eyes would close soon enough, and be kept that way forever. I squeezed my own eyes shut and felt the tears slide down my neck, disappearing and drying up as soon as they had come.

In a rush, the blood surged from his throat, filling my mouth and leaking out the corners of his colorless lips. In the poor lighting I still saw the scarlet liquid, like rubies pouring from his chest and staining my shirt with a hematic rose, pooling around us like red, red carpet or a beach towel on a summer's day. I coughed up the blood filling my mouth from his last kiss, but it made no difference. We were sitting in a bottomless well of crimson, dying and drowning and dying again.

I yanked the kunai from his twitching hands and healed- feeling the fluid-like chakra swarm in my hand. I pressed it into the wound, already knowing it was too late. His eyes were like mirrors to the sky, so dark, so dark, even as the sky was lit aflame by the gods and the sun and radiance touched the earth. They kept their colour in that unfathomable way, searching my face and the unreachable places above in an immeasurable anguish.

"This is a different kind of forever…" he choked out, still smirking in that egotistical way of his, long after his eyes stopped seeing, and the echoes of words left unsaid were still etched, poignant, on his face.


	9. A Wingless Paper Crane

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: Is this the last chapter? Not quite. I am planning something more, but this is as near to the end as it can get. I did lose the inspiration to write on, but thanks to the encouraging words of readers, I'm back on my feet. The ending of this chapter is a little iffy, though I'm not quite sure how to improve it. This chapter does not feel rewarding at all, but I'm sure there are greater things to come. So, if you will indulge me,**_

_**Enjoy.**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Naruto**_

That morning, the sky caught on fire. It blazed and burned with the trails of malicious demons, carts from Hell blitzing across the open expanse. The edges of trees blurred under the light, waving and bending and not quite existing. I sat up with the grogginess of a dead soldier waving about my head. The wrinkles in my sheets seemed to waltz right off the linen, and the chair by my deck seemed to creep slowly towards me. It was the lies of morning that enchanted me. The sole reason I would arrive at class late was to sustain the feeling of not quite knowing where I was, _who _I was, or even what I was doing in the world. It was the feeling of being a murderer, a killer with blood stains in my clothes that taunted me into rushing to school every morning, if not for the pleasure of forgetting, just for a moment, what I existed for.

Who knows what it is that humans want the most? Is that what moves us to stand up and continue living as the world is ending so fallaciously? Sometimes I can imagine a frayed string pulling on my heart, a puppeteer pulling on my heart strings. Other times I feel free as a bird, doing exactly what I want to do. Who knows, indeed? Our world is so mysterious. But even our world has no such thing as forever. No one does.

The door slammed open with a loud _thud, _shocking me from my reverie. In the frame, his face lined with sweat, his lips pursed in that annoyed way of his, was Shikamaru. For the first time in his life, he was looking flustered.

"Naruto. Come with me." he ordered breathlessly, leaning against the sleek oak door.

"Shikamaru, what-" I stuttered, still in a half asleep stupor.

"_Just come_. There's something you should see." he interrupted, avoiding my gaze.

Without a word, I followed obediently him out the door, throwing on a jacket. Despite the beautiful sunrise, winter was, indeed, wrapping its boreal shawl around the village, draping frost on unsuspecting window panes and throwing resilient breath skyward. The tokubetsu jonin walked with a brisk, military pace, his boots thumping against the hiemal pavement. Mute as always save for a few complaints, he revealed nothing on our destination. He didn't need to. As we neared the center of the village, there were splatters of the deepest red, running in streams through the cracks in the paved ground, somehow looking as ruby as the blazing lines in the sky.

Why is it that we continue to sacrifice? What is it that we get back? I asked her that. Who are we dying for? Whatare we fighting for? _Why _are we fighting? She looked at me, then, too beautiful for words. _Why do we fall in love? Why does it hurt so much, Naruto? When I'm far away from you. It feels like my heart is breaking, literally- breaking. Shouldn't love be better than this? Shouldn't love be as great, as wonderful, as everyone says? Why, Naruto? Why does it hurt? No one knows._

His body was crumpled on the wrong angle, his arm crooked and looking so _broken, _everything was just so _wrong, so wrong, so wrong _that I wanted to scream- I wanted to scream all the things I should've said, all the things I should've told him, everything that we had never done. But it was too late, wasn't it? Sakura lay beside him, her eyes closed firmly, her hands unmoving. She lay shivering in blood-soaked clothes, trying hard to die without really dying. _Sakura, _I wanted to say, just to taste her name, because it always lit up my world in the darkest of times. _Sakura, Sakura. _But she was just too still for me to form the word.

The first time, we were beside the river. You looked at me with those eyes so much like the rain, so sad but beautiful, so _lovely _at the same time. We held hands like lovers did, staring beyond into the depths of the laconic days gone by. I had fallen in love with you. I had really, really fallen in love with you. It was all like the rain in every way possible- sad and painful, but if you stared for a long time, it felt like you were flying. That's when you realize how much you don't want it to end, after all. That's when you realize how much you wish you want to be able to love her forever. And how, even then, how much it just won't be enough.

She opened her eyes for only me. I could see the emptiness within them, the apologies, the confessions, the blood, the blood, the blood. Lifting her hands, she looked like a child, lifting them to caress the torrid firmament.

"I couldn't save him." she whispered hoarsely, desperately trying to tell me something.

"It's… it's alright. I mean- I think we'll be okay. We'll be okay." I stuttered, my body screaming for her warmth, to comfort her.

"No, I… I kissed him- I just… I wanted him to be happy-" she confessed, searching for the slightest bit of reassurance behind my eyes, still somehow looking fierce and proud, not in the slightest deterred.

"Sakura, it's alright. I believe in you." I forced out, feeling the stickiness of the blood beneath my feet, the fierce pulse of the sun on the back of my neck, accusing.

"I mean… how could I not? _I love you._ I just… I lo-"

And her hands were on my neck, her lips pressing into mine, so softly and divine- that's when I wondered if that was what heaven would feel like. Her lips, moving like satin against mine, her tongue slipping into my mouth, her body pressed so hard into mine. I felt my heart pounding out of my chest, and her heart, too, just beating in _her _way. It was incomparable. For a moment, I really did forget who I was, where I was, and who it was that had just left us, fated to never return. I don't think it was a mistake. He would've laughed, maybe blushed lightly at the sight of us so passionate. A long time ago, he would've laughed. I like to think that he might've laughed like that again.

Have you ever folded origami? Have you ever brought a paper crane into existence- something so bold made from almost nothing? I think Sakura is just like that- so beautiful and so fragile. The first time I held her, that was the only thing running frantic circles in my mind: the fact that I was so afraid I would break her, hurt her, somehow tear her apart. She was like an erroneous child in so many ways, and so was I. We were like children in love, stumbling past the blunders and laughing jubilantly through the pain. Just being together, mostly. That was the first time I held hands with a paper crane. She was so warm.

Antiseptic smells pierce the heart. They lay, drifting, from hospitals- hospital beds, hospital syringes, hospital gloves. It's the smell of who was there last, but never got to leave. It's the smell of blood and urine and alcohol and the word, 'no'. And I was there again.

"I couldn't save him… _again._" Sakura forced between clenched teeth, hands balled and resting on a pinchbeck life support machine.

"What kind of life support can't even save- _what the hell?!?_" she moaned furiously, chakra flowing in and out of her veins like solid blood.

And that's when she looked at me, her eyes red as her sweat-soaked hair, her sharp fingernails digging into her palms, that I realized that she was more than a paper crane, she was a bird stripped of its wings, someone who wanted nothing more than to escape from a paradoxical life and all the tyrants living it with her.

"I couldn't save him, either, Sakura. It was impossible." I pressed, trying harder than I had ever tried not to look into her storm cloud eyes, spouting tears like a summer hurricane.

"Don't give me that crap." she spat bitterly, squeezing her eyes shut: _The storm clouds are closing in on the sky. _I watched them until they draped themselves over that beautiful, beautiful realm of fairies, nymphs and dryads, almost wanting to scream. When I leaned over the boundaries to kiss her, I closed my eyes, just so I wouldn't have to see the sky, dying. Dying like all the people that had ever left us, like Sasuke. I would have closed myself off forever had she not began to cry again, torrents and myriads of raindrops, falling on my lap and soaking through, falling on my heart and piercing it. I couldn't see the sky dying, falling, but I could hear it, like soft hiccups muffled by bloody snow.

It was the most painful sound I had ever heard.

"This isn't an ending. It can't be," she sobbed into my jacket, hands looking burned with all the blood on them.

"I mean… I used to think love would solve everything."

"That's a fairytale, Sakura, not something that could happen in life. We've had a lot of things taken away, why is this different?"

The moment she looked at me again, I realized what I was afraid of: that she was already broken, long before I had met her, watching lovers die in each other's arms, calling out their names in a grotesque display of _shinobi. _She didn't want to be a shinobi. Neither did I. If it brought so many hardships, and this much… _pain, _then both of us were much better dead.

It wasn't just her that was fragile, it was me, too. All of us, flailing arms for our life and almost reaching the air. Clutching at it.

But water, like realism, is too heavy to overcome.

And I realize I'm crying now, too. Crying and sobbing and holding her close.

The darkness closes in, except this time it's anything but a dream.

We are clutching at air, but drowning, instead.


	10. Epilogue

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto Masashi-sama, and this work is absolute fiction.**_

_**Author's Note: This is the incredibly short epilogue. To all of you who came along with me on this journey and stuck with me this far, I love you all! A special thanks to two wonderful writers that were always brimming with support: FallArbor and IronicEnding. If any of you lovely fans have seen the lovely anime Gundam Seed Destiny, please continue with me by reading my newest work, 'Checkerboarded Wnderland'. Other than that, I am pleased with how this story turned out. Even if it may be for the last time for some of you,**_

_**Enjoy,**_

_**-RaiMidori**_

_**POV: Naruto**_

There was a tree by the side of the village. It was constantly in motion, be it from a stray north wind or a passing shower, throwing branches about spitefully but still looking quite jubilant from my window. Sakura called that window 'the kaleidoscope', the plane of glass refracting and reflecting and lying to our very eyes.

"Can't you see it's in _pain?_" she gushed, delivering a blow that would have pained my younger self to the back of my head.

But we have both changed.

These days, the window is almost always thrown open, letting in the prancing scent of daybreak and yesterday's soil, yesterday's _path_. Of the emptiness the world has left me to live in, I still haven't decided whether or not I like these smells mixed together. Happiness and uncertainty, light and the greyish colour of cement. Contrast that burns at your eyes.

Sakura and I are different. This is something I have known for my whole life. But I cannot help but love her. It is that simple, though I wish there were some other explanation, more complicated, intricate. But it is just this: I love Sakura. I need her. And for the first time in my life, I know she needs me.

At the academy, we used talk about timelines, of heroes, their lives. On a paper timeline, you cannot see the most important things, like that window thrown open, a retired kaleidoscope on the edge of the world. You can see but the faintest glimmer of a monochromatic sunrise captured in the HB graphite.

I don't quite like timelines for this reason alone.

Timelines illustrate _past, _but they don't illustrate _change. _They will never be able to capture the smell of Sakura's hair, the feel of her fingernails digging into my bare chest with raw need. The feeling of loving someone so much that every moment spent apart is another knife to the heart, another needle, another pain thrown into our ever-growing mountain of shinobi pains.

See, there's that kind of pain, love's pain, and there's sad pain. When your best friend leaves for another place and you will _never_ see him again, that's sad pain. Sad pain is when he lays out a carpet of dying roses for you to remember him by, when he kisses your lover as a twisted serenade to the world, when he locks in all emotion to himself and swallows the key. When he dies.

But the last kind of pain is nearly unexplainable. It's the look on your lover –Sakura's- face as she sits under the cherry blossom tree your friend's body was buried under, a lover's pang settling in the core of your being. It's when she just stares out openly and looks so exposed, though you have seen her in many, many situations that seemed like death itself, but still don't compare. It's when she tilts her head back like she does when she kisses you and looks into the sky, just _up, _really.

It's when she gets up with a half-smile that's still gorgeous, dusting off her pants and watching, searching for a sign, any sign.

And it's when she tears her eyes from that expanse of blue and walks away, hands in pockets, heart sewn on her sleeve, sadness trailing like a translucent dress behind her.

Sakura and I never gave up on life. But how we wish we could.

Even as we lean on each other, the world presses in from all sides. That's what life feels like: reaching for something you're not quite sure is there. Reaching –clutching- at air.

Who knows when the air will turn to glass and pierce our fingertips?

We have each other.

So we can only keep reaching.


End file.
